‘Maybe Tom’s right,’ said Bill. ‘We don’t want owt to go wrong tomorrow.’
‘What’s going to go wrong?’ said Angela. ‘The forecast is good, isn’t it?’
‘I’m not fussed about the weather,’ said Bill. ‘It’s just given what’s happened these last few days, I’ll be a lot happier once the sheep are down off the moors.’
‘The Sturzakers aren’t going to bother with us any more now,’ said Angela.
‘How do we know what that bastard’s going to do?’ said Bill.
‘All right, Bill,’ said Laurel. ‘What’s got into you?’
‘Nowt,’ he said.
‘You seem so touchy,’ she said.
‘I wonder why?’
‘Douglas?’ said Laurel.
‘Of course bloody Douglas,’ he said. ‘I lost a damn good dog yesterday just because some bastard had a grudge.’
‘A grudge that’s now been settled,’ said Angela.
‘Aye, well, we’ll see if it has, won’t we?’ said Bill. ‘When they come and cut up your pigs.’
‘That’s enough,’ said Laurel. ‘Don’t spoil the evening for Grace.’
The kitchen had been scrubbed clean and the food that Angela and Laurel had made was spread out on the table, savoury and sweet together. Cuts of ham, cuts of beef. Roast heart. A Roman pie. Marmalade pudding. Blackberry crumble. Damson tart. Jugs of custard and cream next to the gravy boats. An abundance and disorder that children always loved. A reminder that the Devil had once tried to starve us and failed.
As well as being the prelude to Gathering, Devil’s Day marked the start of winter too and things were always brought to stock the larder in the scullery. Bottles of plums, pots of chutney, bilberry jam. And goose eggs from the Dyers’ farm, beetroot from Angela’s allotment and the cucumbers that Bill grew in his cold frame were all pickled in four-pint jars and stacked on the slate shelves.
But the centrepiece of the meal was the lamb stew that Angela carried to the table and unveiled in a mushroom of steam.
‘It’s so nice to have everyone here, isn’t it?’ said Laurel. ‘Well, almost everyone. Isn’t it a pity that the Gaffer couldn’t have held on for one more week?’
‘We’ll just have to sing a bit louder,’ said Angela.
‘And we’ll have to get this one learning the fiddle soon, won’t we?’ said Laurel, cupping Grace’s chin. ‘Keep all the old traditions going. We should write down all the songs too before they get forgotten.’
‘They won’t get forgotten,’ said Angela. ‘We’ve been singing them long enough.’
‘Shall we wait for Daddy before we eat?’ said Grace.
‘He can catch up when he gets here,’ said Bill.
‘Aye,’ said Dadda. ‘Let’s start before it goes cold.’
‘But we’d better save him some food,’ said Grace.
‘I don’t think we’re likely to run out, are we?’ said Liz.
‘All the same, I’ll put some aside for him,’ said Laurel, and once she’d dished out a portion for Jeff, she flitted about the table as usual, handing out the plates of stew. Kat made do with vegetables and bread.
We ate for an hour or so, with Grace and Laurel looking at the clock as each minute passed. Twice, Grace went out into the hallway thinking that she’d heard someone knocking, and twice she came back with a face that no one could perk up until Angela told her it was nearly time to sing the song she’d been rehearsing at home.
‘I’ve lit the fire in the other room,’ said Laurel. ‘It should be nice and warm for us.’
The dishes were left in the sink, the lights switched off and ivy hung on the door handle. We didn’t want the Devil in the kitchen. There was too much temptation there and he’d never leave if he got his knees under the table. Over the years, he’d been taught to be grateful for the bowl of lamb stew that we set out for him on the hearth.
Laurel had probably spent more time in the front room than any of us Pentecosts. When Mam died, she’d thrown herself into the role of housekeeper and over the years her charity had become habit. She still came every week to dust and hoover, even though the furniture was hardly ever used. The paisley rug was too good to be soiled by boots, the sofa and the chairs too well-kept for grubby dogs to lie on. It was a room for those rare occasions, like Christmas and Devil’s Day, when we changed into clean clothes and work could be put off for a while.
Laurel pulled the velvet curtains closed and ran the backs of her hands down the pleats, admiring the job Mam had done of making them when she and Dadda had been first married. It had been Mam who’d hand-stitched the velvet cushions too, blackened the beams that ran across the ceiling, chiselled off the old tiles that had been around the hearth and replaced them with blue and white squares of Dutch milkmaids and windmills. If Mam lingered anywhere in the house, it was here; perhaps that was why Dadda avoided it.
‘She had a beautiful voice, your mam,’ said Laurel. She said the same thing every year and every year there were murmurs of agreement around the room.
In one of the albums that had been passed around the night before the Gaffer’s funeral, there was a photograph of Mam singing on Devil’s Day, her eyes closed, a younger, slimmer Bill standing behind her drawing his bow across the fiddle-strings.
‘Can I sing now?’ said Grace.
‘We said you could, didn’t we?’ said Angela. ‘Go on.’
Grace got up off the sofa and stood with Bill near the fire. She looked at Kat again and Kat looked at me as if to say, see?
‘Ready then?’ said Bill and Grace nodded her head in time as he started and then came in after four.
Come down for a dance and a drink, old boy,
Come down for the sake of your bones.
For the wind will bite and the rain will sting.
Come down for the sake of your bones.
Come down for to filly up your belly, old man,
Come down for the sake of your bones.
Take the wine and the whisky and first bonny lamb.
Come down for the sake of your bones.
There were several more verses, all of which Grace remembered to the letter. When she came to the end, the room was loud with applause and Bill was handed a glass of wine that he swallowed in one go, as tradition demanded. Courage for when the Owd Feller came.
At the reception, the Gaffer had spent an hour singing the old songs from the Endlands, delighting those members of Kat’s family who’d had enough drink to loosen their ties and making those sipping tea half rise from their chairs and peer across the function room at the old duffer making all the noise. He’d gone through the entire repertoire, from tales about honourable thievery:
Come hear the tale of the noble poachers
Condemned all to die
to burlesques about counterfeit virginity:
She said she were a maiden pure
With not a thought of sin.
The cherry bowl she tried to hide,
But I could hear the stones inside.
to the rhymes the children chanted as they jumped the rope in the playground:
Poor owd Jacob, run run run.
Fly away home before the Devil comes.
Poor owd Jacob, where did you go?
Here I am underneath the snow.
The Gaffer told me that Jacob Arncliffe’s had been the last body they found after the Blizzard, making him the thirteenth to die that autumn. Almost a week of thaw had passed before he emerged from under the snowdrifts, a crumpled thing in a greatcoat, his hat discovered fifty feet away, blown off in the storm. He’d ended up far from the lane in the marshy land next to the river, and they could only assume that the poor man had become disorientated as he tried to make his way home to Syke House.
Planks of wood were laid down on top of the sludge and some of the workers from the mill tried to crawl out and retrieve the corpse with as much dignity as they could manage. Yet the pontoon they’d made was so unstable and the body so weighted with water that in the
end they were forced to drag and shove him back to the lane. Their poor Mr Jacob.
And what would happen to the mill now? What would happen to Underclough? Mr Jacob had never married and had no sons to carry on his work. He’d devoted his life to the business and to the village. He was a good man. His own man. He hadn’t ever put himself above them, nor did he fawn to the toffs when they came shooting. He’d loved the the valley even more than the other Arncliffes and as Nathaniel had kept his notebooks, Jacob took photographs. Walk the fells or the riverbanks on a Sunday afternoon and he’d be there staring down into his Box Brownie with his pipe in his mouth.
They crossed themselves and prayed for him. But laid out on the verge, there weren’t many who could stand to look for long, and eventually someone came with a blanket. Even a week’s burial shouldn’t have disfigured him so much, certainly not when he’d been packed into ice and snow. It was, they said, as though he’d been stamped on by a bull.
‘He might be small, Johnny lad,’ said the Gaffer. ‘But the Owd Feller has iron hooves.’
‘Like that horse at the Show?’ I said, recalling the crack of the man’s skull, his hands covering his face, the people running and the mare bending down to chew the grass as though nothing had happened.
‘Ten times harder than that,’ said the Gaffer.
‘Is that what killed Jacob then?’ I said. ‘Not the cold?’
‘Aye,’ said the Gaffer. ‘It weren’t the cold that did for anyone. The Devil only brought the Blizzard here to keep us trapped while he had his fun. He’s like a child, you know.’
For days they waited for the frost in the graveyard to melt but even a week after the snow had stopped falling it was impossible to get more than the tip of a shovel into the earth. There was nothing else they could do but store the thirteen coffins in the church until they could be taken over to Wyresdale. It seemed scant consolation, but at least they could keep folk safe in death if not in life, and they consecrated the doors and kept the candles burning and marked the caskets with crosses of salt.
Of course, the families of the dead were unhappy that their loved ones would have to be buried elsewhere, but they were glad at least that they didn’t have to carry them across the moors where the Devil might be hiding. This was the age of the motor car.
∾
‘Oh, listen, listen. What’s that?’ said Angela, as the song we were singing came to an end. ‘I heard the gate opening outside. I can hear something in the yard.’
‘He’s coming,’ said Grace. ‘Quick. Turn off the lights.’
Laurel got up and flicked the switch and the conversation petered out until there was nothing but the crack of the fire and Gutter Clough spilling past outside. Kat held my hand and tried to avoid looking at Grace, who had seated herself on the arm of the sofa next to her.
‘Go on, Granddad Tom,’ she said. ‘Let him in.’
Dadda went to open the front door and a cold draught followed him back down the hallway. Bill began to play the thinnest note, barely audible at first, but growing louder as he drew his elbow slowly back and forth, now double-stopping in a strange discordant sound. Grace squeezed Kat’s shoulder, convinced by every jangling shadow and every settling floorboard that the Owd Feller was coming in through the door. Everyone raised their glasses to him as he passed them and headed for the heat of the fire. And wasn’t there an extra shadow on the hearthstone for a moment? And didn’t the whisky on the mantelpiece shiver in the glass? And didn’t the spoon move in the stew bowl?
Bill began to play ‘The Devil’s Caper’, something like a shanty or a jig that started off slowly and built in pace once everyone was clapping.
Unable to contain her excitement any longer, Grace said, ‘Can we start the game now?’
‘Aye, go on,’ said Angela.
‘Where’s the blindfold?’ said Grace.
‘Here,’ said Liz, and pulled out a cotton bandage from her pocket.
‘What’s that for?’ said Kat when Grace started to fold it on her knee.
‘Well, someone’s got to dance with the Owd Feller,’ Grace replied. ‘Otherwise he won’t go to sleep.’
Laurel took the blindfold off Grace and tied it gently around Kat’s head. ‘It’s just an owd custom,’ she said. ‘A bit of fun.’
‘Come on, lady, stand up,’ said Angela, helping Kat off the sofa. ‘You can’t dance sitting down.’
‘I don’t want to dance at all,’ said Kat, going to undo the knot that Laurel had tied.
‘Hey, we’ve all done it, Mrs Pentecost,’ said Liz, taking her hands away. ‘First Devil’s Day after marriage. The Owd Feller loves a married woman. He likes to try and take summat that doesn’t belong to him.’
‘John, tell them, please,’ said Kat.
‘Don’t you say a word, John Pentecost,’ said Angela.
‘No one speaks now,’ said Grace. ‘Otherwise it’ll spoil the game.’
‘What game?’ said Kat.
‘You dance with whoever takes your hands,’ said Grace. ‘And you have to say “Devil” when you think it’s him.’
‘This is ridiculous,’ said Kat and then jumped when Liz held her wrists and began to swing them in time to the music. ‘Let me go to bed,’ she said. ‘I’m tired.’
They took a turn around the sofa and then Liz let go, leaving Kat groping around in empty space, and then startling again when Angela gave Dadda a shove and he gripped her hands in his. Kat squirmed to get herself free but Dadda held her until Laurel took over and affected a kind of waltz across the hearth rug. When it was my turn, Kat immediately recognised the scars and roughs of my palms and extracted one of her hands so that she could touch my face.
‘I want to stop now, John,’ she said. ‘Please. I’ve had enough.’
But the rules were such that no one could talk for as long as ‘The Devil’s Caper’ lasted so I had to say nothing and let Grace slide in front of me and have the final dance.
As soon as Grace touched her, Kat cried out as if electricity had run up her arms.
‘If you think it’s the Devil, then say so,’ Angela said.
Grace held on to Kat’s wrists as firmly as she could.
‘You have to say it,’ said Grace. ‘Otherwise he’ll never let you go.’
‘John, please,’ said Kat, trying to work herself free of Grace’s fingers. ‘She’s hurting me.’
‘Just say it then, Kat,’ I said.
‘Devil,’ she said. ‘Devil.’
Kat took off the blindfold and inspected her hands. Then when she looked at Grace, she stepped backwards, knocking over the table where several glasses of wine had been set down while we danced. They fell and rolled on the wooden floor, spilling whatever was left in each.
‘What are you wearing?’ said Kat. ‘What’s she got on her head, John?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Why is she wearing that?’
‘She’s not wearing anything,’ said Laurel, trying to hold Kat’s shoulders. ‘There’s nothing there, love.’
‘Stop looking at me,’ said Kat. ‘Why are you looking at me? What is that?’
‘What’s she talking about, Mummy?’ said Grace.
‘Take it off,’ said Kat. ‘Take it off, it’s disgusting.’
She grabbed a handful of Grace’s hair and pulled it hard. Grace screamed and beat her hands and wrists. Laurel tried to untangle Kat’s fingers but Kat put her other hand against Grace’s shoulder and pulled again, bringing a fist of hair away with a noise like paper being torn. Grace screamed and shoved Kat aside and Angela held her from behind as she sobbed in great inward breaths. Pushing past me and Dadda, Liz knelt down and thumbed at Grace’s scalp. Thin lines of blood were stringing down her ear and beading at the lobe.
‘My God,’ she said, turning to Kat. ‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’
Kat sat down on the edge of the sofa and looked at her hands again.
‘Why did she do that to me?’ said Grace, turning to Liz.
‘It were only a game.’
Liz wiped some of the blood from Grace’s neck and smoothed her hair off her forehead.
‘Why didn’t Daddy come home?’ said Grace, pushing Liz’s hand away, anger in her tears now. ‘You said that he would.’
‘All right, all right,’ said Angela. ‘Shush now.’
‘He’ll be back soon,’ said Liz.
‘I hope he never comes. I hope the Devil bloody eats him,’ said Grace.
‘Go and clean her up in the kitchen,’ said Dadda and, putting himself between Liz and Kat, he nodded at the door.
‘She’d better be gone by tomorrow, John,’ said Liz as she left. ‘Take her home.’
Bill finished his drink and then put his fiddle back in the case. Laurel looked at us for a moment and then went to fetch a cloth from the kitchen to soak up the wine that had been spilled.
‘Don’t you think I’m frightened enough by this place?’ said Kat quietly.
‘No one’s trying to frighten you,’ I said.
‘Then why would you let her put on that horrible mask?’ said Kat. ‘What was it? One of their pig’s heads or something?’
‘Take her to bed, John,’ said Dadda. ‘I’ll drive you to the station tomorrow after Gathering.’
He took another piece of wood and laid it on the fire, so that it would burn through the night and keep the Devil sleeping.
Gathering
No matter how much wine and beer had been drunk on Devil’s Day, everyone got up early the next morning for Gathering. Not because the sheep couldn’t be brought down later but because no one wanted the Devil in the house any longer than necessary. The sooner we had the flock in the bye-field, the sooner we could shock the Owd Feller out of his sleep and send him back to the moors. And once he was back on the moors we could forget about him and tuck ourselves into the valley for the winter.
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